Forty-five steps down a twenty-three foot bank, and that is before you get to the beach and that is before you get in your kayak and paddle the mile or so to the Mawikwe Bay sea caves in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
It is said that our national parks belong to all of us. If that is true, it must include the 1-in-5 Americans who are challenged with mobility issues every day (61 million people). On March 3, 1872 when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill that would create not only this country’s first national park but the first national park in the entire world - Yellowstone - it said that our national parks are for “the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” Not only people who can run a sub ten second 100-yard dash or leap tall buildings in a single bound but “the people,” period.
The other day out at Meyers Beach, the put in for sea kayak trips to the popular Mawikwe Bay sea caves, I watched as a group from Northland Adaptive Recreation geared up for a trip - kayaks, paddles, lifejackets just like every other group but then carrying four wheelchair-bound adventurers down those 45 stairs, one step at a time, in their wheelchairs and helping a double amputee safely navigate the obstacle.
With each step, I was reminded of those words from the 1872 Yellowstone Act: our parks are “for the benefit and enjoy of the people.” All of us. Period.
No, I didn’t stop and watch them paddle away towards the beauty of the caves. I didn’t need to. I already knew they were winners, powerful souls, and people with the spirit of adventure inside of them. Exactly the kind of people that our national parks are for.
— Jeff Rennicke